The rear runner is worked on a pivot or hinge, by a tiller attached to a post that passes up through the platform, and thereby the boat is steered. The sails and rigging are similar to the common large sail-boat. The passengers sit iiat upon the platform, and with a good wind are moved rapidly over the ice, oftentimes at the rate of a mile in a minute.

CHAPTEE XV.

JN" my way to Tomkins's Cove I encountered other groups

of people, "who appeared in positive contrast with the

merry skaters on Peek's Kill Bay, They were sober,

thoughtful, winter fishermen, thickly scattered over

'^^ the surface, and drawing their long nets from narrow

fissuies which they had cut in the ice. The tide was " serving,"

and many a striped bass, and white perch, and infant sturgeon

at times, were drawn out of their warmer element to be

instantly congealed in the keen wintry air.

These fishermen often find their calling almost as profitable in winter as in April and May, when they draw " schools " of shad from the deep. They generally have a " catch" twice a day when the tide is " slack," their nets being filled when it is ebbing or flowing. They cut fissures in the ice, at right angles with the direction of the tidal currents, eight or ten yards in length, and about two feet in width, into which they drop their nets, sink them with weights, and stretching them to their utmost length, suspend them by sticks that lie across the fissure. Baskets, boxes on hand-sledges, and sometimes sledges drawn by a horse, are used in carrying the " catch " to land. Lower down the river, in the vicinity of the Palisades, when the strength of the ice will allow this kind of fishing, bass weighing from thirty to forty pounds each are frequently caught.